


Low

by SomewhereApart



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Marilena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 06:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16948356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomewhereApart/pseuds/SomewhereApart
Summary: Robin can’t let go of Regina’s memory while he’s living in NYC with Marilena.





	Low

Robin takes his showers hot, near to scalding, simply because he can. A small luxury of this world after years spent on the run in another, years spent washing himself in cold streams more often than warm baths.

So here in, this world, in this two-room compartment in New York City, he takes his showers as hot as he can abide, and then he stands in them until they run cold. Washes himself with soap that always seems to make his skin itch, that tickles his nose and burns in his throat, and then stands there like a statue, like a monument to longing and heartache, hands planted on the wall in front of him as the hot water beats down against his skin. Washing away the itch of soap but doing nothing for the way his fingers ache for dark, silky tresses, the phantom catch of her perfume even in a room that smells of Irish Spring.

Robin shuts his eyes and breathes and misses her, here in the only place he has any little bit of privacy. He showers more often than he ought, he supposes - once in the morning before heading out to work (shorter then, he’s a schedule to keep) and now nearly every night after Roland has gone to sleep.

He shouldn’t, he knows.

He’s made a promise to Marian, had told her that she was his choice now, that he loved her, that they were once again each others’ happy endings. It had been a fool’s promise. Weeks have passed - two months, to the day, in fact - and the hope he’d had that his heart would catch up with his mouth, that it would find some way to leave Regina behind and settle into life with Marian again, had been a false hope. Time away from her has done nothing to dim his love, has done nothing to dull the pain of never seeing her again, and there are days he feels he’s breaking apart under the pressure to keep up pretenses for his family. To pretend he’s not betraying Marian by sneaking off to these private showers, long minutes of solitude where he thinks of Regina, where he recalls every feature in as much detail as he can manage (the dip of that scar on her lip, and how it felt beneath his tongue, the sound of her soft sighs against his ear, the weight of her hand on his chest in sleep, the snarl of her mouth those months in the forest, the dark arch of her eyebrow, the warm honey of her laugh), all of her, every bit, until he can _feel_ her with him.

On the worst of days, he imagines she’s there with him, under the hot spray, her hands on his back, his chest, his belly and then lower. On the worst of days, the ones he’s most helpless to his longing, he takes himself in hand and strokes and rubs and imagines that it’s her hand, soft and uncalloused, and he has to bite his lip to stifle her name as he spills and watches his devotion to her swirl down the drain and away from him. Away from this home.

As it should, he thinks.

He should try harder to be who Marian needs, but he just cannot rid himself of his love for Regina. And he finds more and more than he doesn’t want to. He finds more and more that he wishes to keep her in his heart, to carry her there, if he can have her nowhere else. He finds–

The door opens, a soft click and rush of cold air, and Robin reaches for the taps immediately, a slick churning of guilt in his belly. There’s a metallic squeak as he twists the knobs to off, and then the dripdripdrip of the spray petering out.

Robin reaches for the towel hung over the end of the shower rod and wraps it round his waist, tucking it before he draws the shower curtain back to find Marian standing there, robe-clad, and frowning.

“Oh,” she says with an air of disappointment. “I thought I might join you.”

He tries for nonchalance as he quirks his brows, lifts his shoulder. “I’ve just finished.”

Marian nods, but it’s a hollow thing. They both know he’s spent longer under the spray than the ten minutes he’s just passed.

Her hand rises, fingertips drawing along his bicep, tracing the scar there then skirting over to his belly and grazing down and down. He lets her, because what else is he to do?

She pauses around his navel, swirls her fingers in a way that makes his belly clench, and asks, “Then maybe you’d like to join _me_?”

She wants more from him. More than he’s been able to give. More than the warmth of his body beside her at night, more than kisses good morning and goodnight, hello and goodbye. More than the occasional wandering hand. She wants all of him, and he’s been unable to give it, and every time he denies her, he feels a little bit more space yawn between them. He’s ruining them, denial by denial.

Still, he exhales heavily, murmurs, “Marian…”

Her hand drops away, her face twisting into a sneer of disgust that looks wrong on her. Like it doesn’t belong. This world has hardened her, it seems. Has made her full of jagged edges, and temper, and harsh features she never wore in the years before they were parted. Or maybe those are his doing, too. Maybe his inability to live up to his promises, to be what she needs, to truly make her happy are what take their toll on her soft and lovely countenance.

“How long are you going to make me wait, Robin?” she asks him. “How long are we going to keep pretending you’re not holding on to some wasted fidelity to _her_?”

His jaw clenches, but it’s not anger so much as a fresh wave of guilt.

“Marian-”

“Because it is her, isn’t it? She’s the reason we’re not truly together.”

Marian’s arms are crossed tightly over her chest, her dark eyes (the wrong dark eyes, God, how can he think that with her right there in front of him?) shining with hurt and anger.

Robin swallows hard and tries to explain, tries for once to be honest with her, truly so. “It’s not loyalty to her. It just… It hardly seems fair to lie with you, and think of another. And I know that I would. Think of her.”

Shame burns in him to admit it, makes his ears hot, has him ducking his head, because they try not to speak of this, of her, of Regina. She’s the ghost that haunts them but they try not to lend her voice. But he has now, he’s had to, because he wants Marian to understand that it’s not… that it’s… that he’s…

“Just get out.”

The words fall from her lips, weary and scorned, and Robin obeys because it is easier. Because somewhere in the last few months he has become a man who chooses the easier path, the one that keeps the peace, and it burns in his gut, but what can he do? Honesty will only ruin them now, and he’s made vows to her, they’ve a son, and Regina is gone, lost to him forever it seems.

He remembers telling Regina to have hope, that their happy ending was possible, was all in their choices, but he feels no hope now. It’s all bled out of him, left somewhere between the invisible town line of Storybrooke and this city of stone and noise and false promises.

He sits on the edge of their bed, his and Marian’s, still dripping water, little rivulets chasing down his spine, catching in the towel slung uselessly around his hips. Dampening the bedsheets around the palms he presses to the edge of the mattress.

This is no life, he thinks. No life for them. He must do better, he must try harder to forget her, but the very idea tugs hard at his chest, makes him ache and ache for her.

Robin closes his eyes and sees Marian’s sneering face in the dark of his mind, and he wonders how it’s possible to miss both of them. Regina, as she is, and Marian, as she was. Before. Before all this. Because the woman she is now, the one who has screwed the taps on again for what will surely be a lukewarm shower, she’s like a stranger to him. Every day he seems to find some new thing about her that feels foreign, feels wrong, and he knows it is not her. It is him. It is the stretch of years after what he thought was her passing, it is the time he spent growing and changing and letting her go while she was traveling through time to find him again.

It is no fault of hers, his Marian, with her bright eyes and her tender heart and her joyful laugh.

It is no fault of hers that he cannot be who he was, and so he must try harder. He must do better.

He has stripped enough of her joy, he must find a way to restore it.

But tonight, he hasn’t the energy. Tonight, he is too spent by missing her. Missing both of them.

So tonight he changes into pajamas, warm flannel pants and a t-shirt that had once belonged to Baelfire, and he leaves their bedroom behind. Instead he carefully lifts Roland from his makeshift bed on the sofa and stretches himself over the cushions, cradling his boy to his chest and drawing the blankets back over top of them.

These days, this is the only thing that feels right. His son.

He’ll sleep here tonight.

Marian would probably prefer it anyway.

In the morning, he will try again.

To be better.

To forget.


End file.
